Windows Phone 7 devices updated unofficially won’t be getting any further official updates

Yesterday Microsoft released a new (security) update for the Windows Phone 7 OS. It seems not all devices will qualify for this update though. Those phones that have been updated previously via any unofficial channel, won’t be able to get this update and any further to follow.

The Microsoft’s explanation is very simple:

“The best way to think about this is that with regard to updating, the phone is a state machine. When the state machine is in proper working order, updates can happen via the official channel no problem. When an unofficial program uses undocumented APIs to force an update, things can go awry. In this case, the unofficial process performed an incomplete update. As such, the state machine was changed – not updated, changed.”

Although the Windows Team blog states there might be a fix in the future, there is no promise. It surely makes some sense to punish those who didn’t listen to the warnings so you stop that practice at the very beginning. But knowing how few Windows Phone 7 devices are actually out there, this restrictive tactics surely isn’t the best thing to do. Especially when the specific update in mind (the copy/paste one) took Microsoft six months to release.